


is this love?

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [54]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Emperor Kylo Ren, F/M, Forced Marriage, Kings & Queens, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-16 09:44:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12340212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: “It’s okay,” her brother tells her on their wedding night, lowering himself to sit on the floor beside her, until his nose is level with her shaking knees. When he smiles, he looks like a monster. “You don’t have to love me.”Then he goes to sleep on the couch, taking only a threadbare pillow from their marriage bed.





	is this love?

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so. I wanted to write something slightly dark for October and knew that I wanted it to involve incestuous rulers, forced marriage, and magic. And after the new trailer came out, I knew that I wanted it to be Star Wars. This... is what happened in response. A little inspired by The Grisha Trilogy, a little inspired by Uprooted. Honestly I wrote the first bit and just went where the story wanted. Title from [Is This Love by Governors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I3cDeIPPnE), which is honestly the perfect song for these two characters.
> 
> Also, I'm not saying this was custom tailored for you, yes _you_ , but this was totally custom tailored for you. You're wonderful. :)

“It’s okay,” her brother tells her on their wedding night, lowering himself to sit on the floor beside her, until his nose is level with her shaking knees. When he smiles, he looks like a monster. “You don’t have to love me.”

Then he goes to sleep on the couch, taking only a threadbare pillow from their marriage bed.

 

Rey doesn’t remember her childhood. Her earliest memory is of eating a skinned lizard that she’d stolen out of someone’s back pocket in a crowded marketplace. Its bones were gnawed on and there was little meat to be had, but it kept her belly full for that much longer, so she’d eaten every bit of it, crunching little bones between her teeth, and licked her greasy fingers afterwards.

She had been seven years old.

Rey remembers nothing of a family. There is a blank slate in the quietest parts of her mind where her memories should dwell, as if someone had reached inside and scooped them all out. In the dark of the night, hunkered down under what little shelter she could find, Rey had whispered stories to herself of the family that searched for her, about the person that she might be.

How had they lost her, she had wondered night after night, starving slowly to death as the desert howled around her. How could you lose a _whole person_?

Each winter was a little harder, each summer the heat more cruel, but even as a blank slate, Rey had survived, telling herself those stories to help her sleep through the night.

 

“Brother,” Rey calls him at a state dinner, and has the pleasure of watching him flinch backwards as if she has struck him. He looks at her sharply, something like a threat in the jut of his chin and the cut of his black eyes. Rey wonders how he would react if they were alone; she’s heard, of course, of his legendary temper, but has yet to see it for herself.

Her husband sets his teacup back into its saucer with a gentleness belayed only by the hardness of his eyes. There’s a grimace playing around the corners of his mouth, and Rey wonders, in a distant sort of way, if she is the only one who can see it.

Their dinner guests look on politely, smilingly - as if nothing is wrong.

“Sister,” he responds after a moment’s pause, the singsong tone of his voice nearly playful. There’s a smile on his face, but it’s fake. Practiced. Rey has seen this man prowl the halls of their home when it is empty of all but the two of them. She knows that he does not smile. In fact, she’s fairly confident that she could live here for millennia and never once witness such an act. Not in truth.

The Skywalker palace of legend is cold and empty. Its corridors are barren, the rooms haunted by a ghost of a family that she’d never known. It is difficult for her to imagine it as a place of joy. Of sunlit corridors and childlike laughter, the smell of freshly baked bread.

Rey flashes him a smile in return, not one of joy or hope, but one to match his own. Polite, calculated, distant - her own eyes grown cold and dark. Maybe, she thinks, he will see the resemblance between them that she still cannot. “Pass the salt, please.”

 

She learns how to make fire first, because in the desert, fire is easy to create. It is all you know, the heat of the sun pressing down upon your back, leaving every hint of exposed skin brown and peeling.

Rey learns how to make fire in the heart of the desert, hidden away beneath an overturned carriage. There are the bones of some unlucky oxen partially obscured by the sand, and she sits between their bleached white ribcages and sparks a flame between her fingertips. She makes it dance between them, the wisp of blue curling ‘round and ‘round her wrist.

It is warm, but it does not burn her.

Water is the last to come to her, some years later.

She is in the marketplace, a length of scratchy wool cloth wound tight around her head and mismatched brown boots on her feet, when one of the village boys begins to wail. An empty bucket lies between his feet, the water already soaking into the sand. From the look of absolute terror on his and his mother’s face, they’ve already exceeded their water rations for the week.

Rey bites her lip and crosses the space between them. She stretches her hand out and tugs gently at some hidden well inside of her, something that she can’t see but can _feel_ \- the current within that connects the water in her blood to the water bloating the white clouds so high above their heads. Rey yanks, carefully, and pulls it down.

When it is done she sways, dizzy with the effort. The bucket is little more than half full, but it will do. She looks at the boy and tries to smile, but finds the world darkening rapidly around her.

When Rey wakes, she has to blink for a bit, disoriented and aching. Her mouth is _parched_ , the skin of her brow damp with sweat, and for a moment she panics at the darkness, the unfamiliar silhouettes looming up out of the dark. She breathes, calming herself until she can look around and realize that while she slept, she'd been placed in a cool, dark tent. A royal guard stands motionless at the mouth of the tent, his white robes a shock in the darkness. Carefully, Rey pushes herself into a sitting position, keeping an eye on the man, her body poised and ready for an attack that never comes. Once he's realized that she's awake, he gives a short bow and disappears outside.

She’s still sitting there when another man steps through the doorway, this one taller than the first. His hair is dark, his skin pale and out of place in the desert. His robes are black and trailing the floor, but from where Rey is sitting she can tell that they are well made. Exquisitely so, she thinks, noting the flash of gold at his throat.

He stares at her, his eyes heavy and intent. She does not know who he is, or what he wants, but she knows well enough that it’s best to run when men look at a woman like that.

The man catches her around the waist before she can call attention to the guards, but seems to be taking care not to hurt her, gentle even as she struggles. Only once she’s quieted does he look at her again, and then it’s only a flash of its former self. Quick, dismissive. He lets her go so quickly that she stumbles, catching herself with one hand against his shoulder.

“Sister,” he says. So simple. Easy. As if he isn’t unraveling her whole world with a single word. “We leave at sundown. Someone will be by shortly to attend to you.”

 

The first time that Rey sees her brother practice the art, she is being fitted for her wedding dress.

He is not strictly speaking supposed to be in the room with them, but none of the servants have quite worked out how to tell him to leave, and Rey doesn’t care one way or another herself. From her understanding, seeing the bride before the wedding makes for a bad match. It brings misfortune on the future household. Bad crops. Dead cattle. Some tales even say that it leads to an empty womb.

Let them be unlucky, Rey thinks with a sniff.

Her brother is reading, half-reclined on the settee to the left of the door, his leg crossed at the knee. It’s been well over an hour since he’s moved to do anything more strenuous than turn a page. Whatever lies within the book's pages has captivated him thoroughly, his mouth having gone ever so slightly slack as he mouths words to himself, black eyes intent.

The sun is beginning to set, the room growing long with shadows around them.

Rey is watching him when her brother flicks his wrist lazily, still absorbed in his book, and calls a ribbon of scarlet flame to the palm of his hand. It winds itself lovingly between his fingers, circling around and around his wrists, like some lazy beast.

Startled, Rey’s breath catches in her chest. Blinking, her brother looks up, catching her eye over the flame, the red glow casting him in a devilish light.

He cocks his head, and she wonders at his expression, the curiosity there as he unravels the flame outward, letting it find the wicks of the fat, ivory candles on the desk next to him. He quirks an eyebrow at her.

The room is still half in darkness, the last of the fading sunlight leaving them.

Rey licks her lips and steels her expression, flexing her fingers nervously before she raises her hands and cups them together. She doesn’t look away from him as she calls on her oldest friend, the familiar blue flame licking first over her knuckles and wrists, teasing, before it settles between her palms. She lights the rest of the room like that, and doesn’t pay any attention to the way the seamstress is fretting about Rey scorching the sleeves.

Her brother’s eyes are dark and intent on _her_ , his book forgotten.

 

“You are _kin_ ,” the man tells Rey urgently, as if the word has another meaning that she has yet to learn. “So you must be wed at once.”

Rey lets out a sharp bark of laughter, disbelieving. “You _must_ be joking.”

 _Skywalker,_ the villagers had whispered reverently as Rey had been paraded amongst them between a set of royal guards, only half a step behind the emperor. Men and women who had known Rey her _entire life_ , who had watched and sneered as she quietly starved each winter, had dropped to their knees before her in worship, touching the hems of her dirty clothes, kissing her mismatched boots, pleading.

Skywalker, Rey thinks, and swallows back something bitter.

She has a name now, but she’s yet to find out what it means.

The man’s expression twists as he wrings his hands, the urgent look on his face dimming to a quiet horror. “You have the gift, yes?”

Rey narrows her eyes, fighting the urge to hide her hands behind her back. “And what if I do?”

“Then you are Skywalker,” the man says simply. He shrugs, as if he doesn’t know how better to explain it. “You are _Empress_.”

 

Her husband never calls her by her name, but Rey never thinks to wonder why until he catches cold the winter after they’ve been married. The palace is cold as ever and the servants have been sent home for the duration of the seven day solstice, but their room - _her_  room - is warm from the fire and the heaps and heaps of blankets that she’s piled haphazardly onto the bed.

She only goes looking for him on the second day when he doesn’t join her for breakfast, and even then, she tells herself that it’s only out of self preservation. It’s certainly not out of loneliness.

Rey finds him on the floor of the library, sprawled like a crushed spider between the stacks. He is pale and sweating, his skin clammy, breathing rapid. She nearly leaves him there before her better nature gets the best of her.

Dragging him back to her nest of blankets is hard work, made all the more difficult by the flight of stairs standing between the library and her destination, but Rey accomplishes it with only minor strain. Once she’s arranged the blankets around him she crawls in afterwards, scowling even as she wraps her arms and legs around his chilled and clammy flesh.

“I hate you,” Rey says, in a testing sort of way. Her brother doesn’t so much as twitch, heavy brows knitted together.

“I wish you had never found me,” she tries, with more surety. There’s a rage simmering in her chest, the same fire that had roared when she’d opened her eyes to find this man in her tent, his wide black eyes searching, always searching.

“I wish I had died in that desert,” she whispers, but even as she says the words she knows that they are a lie. She wouldn’t have chosen this life, but it seems to have found _her_.

Rey feeds her brother broth and water, seeing him through the worst of the fever as he murmurs nonsense words into the sweat slick skin at the nape of her neck. On the second day, he opens his eyes and looks at her with impossible gentleness, his black eyes hazy but focused entirely on her.

He reaches out and touches her cheek, cups her jaw, and whispers, “I know you.”

With chapped lips he lays a kiss upon her brow, as if in supplication, and cries, great wracking sobs that shake them both until sleep takes hold of him once more.

On the third day his fever breaks, and Rey wakes to find him looking at her, drowsy but lucid.

“Your name,” he starts quietly, just as Rey is beginning to consider what to say. “Was not always Rey. I knew you by another, when you were very small.”

Rey swallows, her throat working. For some reason, it had never occurred to her that he might possess memories that she did not. That he may have known her as his sister, that he may have even missed her when she was lost.

He looks at her carefully. Asks, “Would you like for me to tell you what it was?”

Rey licks her lips and says, in a creaking voice, “My name is Rey.”

He stares at her for another precious moment, his eyes searching, before he nods and climbs off the bed.

 

The journey from Rey’s desert to the capital city takes three and a half weeks. Three and a half weeks of bumpy carriages and frequent stops, made better only by the constant and unceasing deluge of _real food_.

During that time, her brother does not say a word to her.

Rey has questions, dozens of them, that no one can seem to answer.

On the night before they’re due to enter the city, Rey sneaks past the guards and into the emperor’s tent. She finds him sleeping, his head pillowed on his hand, bedroll spread neatly across the tent floor.

She doesn’t know what she’d been expecting. A decadent array of silken pillows and candied treats? A horde of women, all at her brother’s disposal?

Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been the strictly utilitarian tent that she’s found herself in, empty of everything save some papers, a bedroll, and her brother himself. She feels silly, for a moment, and stares helplessly at his prone form.

As she watches, his eyes blink open, his whole body tensing, poised and ready for an attack before he registers her presence.

“Sister,” he says, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

It is much like their first meeting, with the tent and the unconsciousness.

“Brother,” she replies neutrally, her voice wobbling with uncertainty.

“You have questions,” he says, propping himself up with one elbow as the silence stretches between them. It isn’t a question.

“I do.”

He looks at her, and like this, with lines from his pillow on his face, he isn’t quite so scary. Like this, worn from sleep and travel both, he looks like someone that may even be possible to know.

 _They call you a monster_ , she thinks. _Why?_

Her brother licks his lips, and says, “Because, dear sister, to the people, we Skywalkers will always be monstrous.”

She startles, reeling, even as his countenance gentles further. He lays his head back down and turns his back to her, but in her head she hears his voice, clear as a bell - _They fear what they do not know._

 

“Our mother is alive,” her brother tells her one day over porridge, as if they’re discussing the weather. As if they _discuss things._

Rey licks her lips. The spoon clatters to the floor.

She doesn’t bother to pick it up.

“Is she?” Rey asks, her voice strained.

Her brother looks at her suddenly, steepling his hands together over his breakfast. He always looks serious, but this is the first and only time that Rey has felt inclined to actually take him seriously.

“She’s General Organa, leader of the resistance,” he tells her and before Rey can reach out and choke him, he adds, “No one knows.”

Rey goes quiet. “And our father?”

His eyes skitter away from hers. “Dead.”

“How?” she hisses between gritted teeth.

“I killed him.”

She sucks in a breath, wounded, and pushes to her feet so quickly that the chair behind her goes tumbling backwards, landing on the stone floor with a crack as loud as a gunshot. A gust of wind rolls through the space between them, touching lightly upon her curled fist. The message is clear. 

“Why?” she gets out, her eyes full of hot, sudden tears. She shouldn’t feel this pain for a man that she never met, but she does. She _does_.

Her brother takes a breath. “Because it was necessary.”

She chucks a vase at his head, and then, when he blocks it easily - simply leaves the room.

 

On the first anniversary of their wedding, her husband’s advisers force them out of their fortress of solitude. It is Rey’s first outing since they were wed, and if the wrinkled old men who tell her husband what to do are to be believed, the people wish to see her happy and healthy.

“It would be better, of course, if you were with child,” one of them says, his sneering face like a weasel's. The man flashes her brother a look of disapproval and Rey strongly wishes to beat him in the face with a chair.

“We are in no rush,” her husband says, and the man scoffs.

“The people-” he starts.

“The people,” her husband whispers dangerously. “Can wait.”

 

“Skywalkers,” her brother starts later that night. He is talking to her door, heavy with metals and inlaid jewels, but she can hear him. “Have always been paired together. If you are Skywalker, you have the gift. If you have the gift, you were born to rule. If you were born to rule, you were born to be _wed_.”

Rey gets up from her bed and slides to the floor next to the door, curling her bare toes into the rich carpet that mutes the chill of the marble and stone.

She can hear him take a deep breath. “Our mother chose differently.”

Rey pushes to her feet, pulling the door open a crack between them. In the darkness beyond the doorway, he is a wraith in the dark. He is looking at her, for once with a horrible kind of feeling in his eyes.

“Things are not as simple as they seem,” he tells her.

“You’re a puppet,” she says, and it sounds like an accusation.

He hesitates, but nods in the end.

“I think…” he starts, then shakes his head. “I believe that our father tried to hide you before things got too bad. That our mother wanted to protect you from this in a way that she couldn’t with me.”

Rey opens the door wider in invitation and takes several steps backwards, until she can take a careful seat on the edge of her bed.

“They made you execute him,” she guesses.

“No,” he hisses, fist clenching at his side. “I _chose_ to execute him so they wouldn’t get the chance to.”

Rey crosses her arms and chuckles meanly. “I’m guessing it solidified your position though.”

He grits his teeth. “I can get you out of the palace,” he says quickly, and Rey straightens, realizing that this is his true purpose for being here. “Mother will know by now what’s happened. She’ll be waiting. I can get you to a pilot, and he’ll take you to her.”

“What about you?”

He sneers. “I was born into this. I don’t get a choice. You, however, _were_ given one.”

She considers him, carefully. His hands are still clenched at his sides, robes in faint disarray, dust streaked across the front of them. His face is twisted up, expression like a carefully concealed wound. Over the last year, he has given her little reason to trust him, but she thinks that he may have been protecting her in his own way.

That perhaps his constant avoidance of her may have even been a way to protect himself, locked away here in this palace of thorns and deceit, forever lonely. He hadn’t wanted to let himself hope.

Rey crosses the space between them, stopping only once she is standing just before him. Her head is level with the base of his neck, so she has to tilt her head to look at him properly. Her heart thumps unevenly beneath her breast, thundering at the idea of freedom so close. Deliberately, she steps into the warmth of his body and slides her hand slowly up his chest, mapping the rise and fall of it, the heartbeat that lay underneath. She drags her fingers up his neck, until she’s cradling his jaw, her fingers splayed across his cheek. It is an almost perfect mirror to the way that he’d touched her over solstice.

“And if I don’t want to leave?” Rey whispers, and his breath shudders out of him, uneven.

He ducks his head, tilts in towards her, and says, so surely, “You will.”

“And if I _don’t_?”

He looks at her, and slowly, he smiles. “Then we will be stuck in this cage forever.”

Her fingers map the curve of his jaw and from there, slide back around to the base of his skull. She threads her fingers through the hair there, and thinks of laughing at his softness, his soft white hands without their calluses, his soft, perfumed hair. The fragile velvet skin of his lips.

They are opposites, two sides of the same person. For the first time, she realizes that of the two of them, she is the one made hard from the years. She holds a power over him, one that he does not yet possess.

Rey tugs him down to her and says, against his lips, “Or, we will break it together from the inside.”

His breath catches and he makes to pull back, but she keeps him steady, presses her brow to his. She looks at him, kisses him again, this one more than the simplicity of a feather-light touch. She takes hold of his face and keeps him there, kisses him deeply, hungrily. When she breaks from it they are both panting shallowly. His black eyes have grown even darker with want.

“This is what they wanted to protect you from,” he tells her urgently, even as his fingers greedily, _reverently_ , touch her sides through her bedclothes.

Rey lets him touch her, tilts her body into it.

“Maybe I don’t want to be protected,” she says, and tugs the shift over her head, her nipples going tight when exposed to the air. She takes his hand and places it on her breast, grinning up at him sharply, a hard-edged thing that the desert had given her, and thinks, _Maybe I can protect myself_.

That night, she lets him press her back into their sheets, lets him bury his nose in the sweat-slick curve of her neck, and join with her. She takes from him, hungrily, and he lets her have all that he has to give.

When they lay awake in the pre-dawn light, she will turn to him and say, “You love me, don’t you?”

And he will quirk a smile at her, and she will be shocked to find it real. “Was it that obvious?”

 


End file.
